I can't use the Metro interface because I need more than one app opened at a time. I can't use Desktop mode because I have around 60 apps installed and some I don't use often enough to know the name of in order to search for them.

An OS is like a road, it just facilitates cars driving on it. People don't use the road, they use their cars. People don't use computers for the OS, they use them for the apps. As long as the road is drivable, nobody should care about the road. As long as the OS is functional, nobody should care about the OS. Every now and then the road gets paved, but after the paving, it's back to being forgotten about. Every now and then the OS gets updated, and it should go back to being forgotten about. When your road gets paved, you shouldn't have to relearn how to drive on it, just like when your OS gets updated, you shouldn't have to relearn how to use it.

Sure, maybe they added a bike lane so the first two times you take that road it's a surprise, but nothing major. With Windows 8, Microsoft not only changed the color of the stripes, they changed what the stripes mean, which side of the road you drive on, all the colors of the traffic lights, and they randomly make you load your car onto a train and then ride in the caboose for a few miles, before letting you and your car back onto the road.

ISO15693:Flying Code Monkey: . People who don't get that the Start Screen is just the Start Button exploded from a corner to a screen ... don't get stuff.

I think that's the best way to put it.

Some people have built their own sense of identity on not liking new things. Change hurts them personally.

I'm still waiting to hear why I would want the start menu "exploded" over the entire screen, covering up everything while replacing my nice tidy list of shortcuts with giant tiles and advertisements. Stupidest thing they've done in a long time.

MS does a good job of giving IT departments a break, by making alternating "useful" and "immensely broken" OS upgrades. XP was a "gotta have it", vista was grounds for termination. Windows 7, we jumped right on. Windows 8, will never see daylight in most shops.

Seems to me the marketing weasels dropped the ball on this one. They should have just sold it as "Windows Touch" instead of a whole new Windows version.

There would have been a lot less raging I think, if MS had thought to let users choose their preferred desktop during installation and have that become their default. And of course offer an option in system settings to let you switch from one to the other.

Celerian:The biggest complaint I find is that people who HATE windows 8 are usually not willing to give up the "Start Menu" and feel that the OS is broken without it. If that's their definition of broken, then yes, it's broken. This article will tell them how to edit their registry so they never see the Metro UI interface on startup and they can get one of those third part programs to bring back their start bar. Or they could just stick with Windows 7, which is also fine.

That's not why people hate Windows 8. The Start Screen replacing the Start Menu is just a symptom of the problem.

The real reason Windows 8 is being reacted to poorly is because everything about its operation - even in desktop mode - is keyed towards Tablet and Touchscreen operation. In particular, mandatory gestures and unmarked screen "hot zones" are things which make a great deal of sense on a touchscreen, but are JUST F%$#ING MADDENING with keyboard+mouse control. The "hold and drag" operation for logging in, etc. is particularly bad. On a touchscreen it's simple: touch top of window, keep finger on screen while you drag it wherever. Easy. But with a mouse it becomes a two step operation of click, hold click, move mouse at same time, release when contextually appropriate. This should not be something you have to do for any mandatory OS operation like logging in. If nothing else, it's bad for older people; my mother literally cannot do this motion more than a few times before her arthritis kicks in and her hand becomes useless.

Then there's "hot-zones", which again make more sense on a touchscreen, but even here could have been handled better. The biggest issue with the Windows 8 implementation of them is that there is NO visual indicator as to their location; you are just expected to ALREADY KNOW where they are, which means either sitting through a tutorial or asking someone else. This is a step backwards from every previous version of Windows since 95, where we had a button that LITERALLY tells us "start here". Not only that, everything's spread out among multiple hot zones. The start menu is on one corner, the "charms bar" is somewhere else entirely, as is settings. These aren't really things that need to be strictly separated, or made harder for the user to find.

Like I said, this all makes a lot more sense on a touchscreen or tablet, where these kinds of things are expected. For a desktop it's just awkward. Windows 8 is probably phenomenal on tablets and so on, but my desktop won't be running it anytime soon.

You realize that this isn't exactly a ringing endorsement, right? By all accounts, Windows 7 was "really good," and here you're saying Windows 8 "isn't that bad." So why would anybody choose windows 8 over windows 7?

Actually, I'm going to leave that as a standing question to everybody. What benefits does Windows 8 have over Windows 7?

By "not that bad", it means it's an incremental improvement over 7. Just a list of things Windows 8 does better:

1. Significantly less resource usage than 72. Storage spaces - love love love this3. Restrictions on what can become a boot process - i.e. you won't have everyone from Adobe to that guy's activeX app your mom clicked on launching themselves at startup (this is the biggest reason most computers become slower over time).4. Restrictions on background processes - no more applications installing random stuff as a system service, they all run as user (subject to resource restrictions).5. Significantly smaller HD footprint.6. Device interrupt coalescing -- in a mobile device (tablet, for instance) it won't wake up for any random PCI device that wants to do something. Instead, it queues up all of that and wakes up the CPU (and associated bus systems) in short bursts to service multiple devices. This is a significant power optimization.

All in all, they did a significant amount of work to make it feasible to run on low-level tablet hardware (less RAM, limited HD space, less processing power) with battery life in mind. And by all measurable means, they've done a good job.

Care to explain to me under what circumstances I would ever use the touch screen? Right now, I can move my hand a few centimeters in either direction with my arm resting on the table and then move my index finger about a millimeter downwards to click on something. On a touch screen, I'd need to lift my whole arm up and swing it from place to place to click on things. That sounds much, much worse.

Bacontastesgood:It's funny to see the people defending this turd. This is the pivot toward irrelevance for MS. They had a pretty good run - over 25 years of dominance on desktops and notebooks. Xbox will still be pretty good to them, and Office in some form. But the next 5 years will be exceedingly brutal in the OS space. There will be vast numbers of "what happened" articles written.

It's funny seeing Luddites who haven't spent any time with a touch-screen computer and Windows 8 knee-jerk bash what will be seen in a few years as revolutionary technology.

I love threads full of people that vehemently pretend to know wtf they are talking about.

I've been using Win8 for a couple weeks now and it is, without a doubt, an improvement in every way over 7. Now, is it worth the money to buy? That depends, but it is no doubt better, UI and all.

Firstly, you can have 2, not 1, Metro app open at the same time. About 2 dozen people said otherwise, that alone proves they've never even watched a video of someone using Win8. Secondly, you can have the desktop AND an app open at the same time. Win8, for screen space purposes, treats the entire desktop as a giant metro window and docks the app itself off to the side. I have often used the messenger app while working on my desktop.

The new start screen is much better than the old start menu. The old start menu was quickly reduced to near uselessness by tons of nested folders obscuring what you were looking for. It took me about two weeks to stop using it in Win7. So I haven't even considered its existence for... 3 years? I don't even remember.

What they did do was take the two actually useful features, pinned items and searching, and make them better. So now rather than a tiny list of pinned items in a tiny start menu, you effectively have an infinite number of them on a giant screen, grouped however you like. I group my frequently clicked ones towards the center of the screen, making them faster to click (Windows Key + click). They also improved the search functionality, which was already quite good. You want pinned items on the desktop? You still have the taskbar and desktop icons.

The live tiles, and online integration are also very nice, and quite useful. I find myself using Metro apps simply because they are so convenient. When I get emails, they pop up and I just click. Now, I still use the web interface when doing anything heavy duty, but it is handy for alerts and reading/replying. I also end up using the messenger because it connects to Facebook without it either being open or having Facebook open. Since I rarely use it, it is nice that people are able to message me.

Finally I enjoy the live tiles. I think they look great and are useful even on a desktop. I look forward to see how they are used in the future. I still spend most of my time on the desktop of course, but the new UI is "Start Menu++" by a long-shot.

cman:bbfreak: cman: JosephFinn: What is the best feature of iOS on the iPad? A permanent hardware Home button. It isn't as convenient as going "Back" on Android

If Back worked consistently, that might be true. But it doesn't: I Never Have Any Idea What The Back Button Will Do

Back button sucks hard.

Aint nothing else to say bout that

I have never had a problem with the back button and my phone is running Gingerbread.

The problem with the back button is that it has no uniformity. When you press the Home button on the iPad, you know what is going to happen. Pressing the back button is like rolling the dice taking a chance and 1/4th the time it doesnt go where you expect it to go

And one last thing that drive me crazy. Out of the box Windows RT is set to put the tablet to sleep after an absurdly short time of not being used (I think it is something like a minute or two). Unlike Windows Phone, where this is easy to change in the lock screen settings, Windows RT doesn't let you tweak this commonly changed setting in the main Metro-ized settings screen. No, you have to go to the Desktop, and then dig into the power settings to change the sleep and screen dimming timers. A settings screen that gives you tiny little tapping targets on a 10.6" screen, so good luck trying to do it easily if you didn't buy the keyboard cover.

I've only seen it on the Surface, but I'm confused. When it was folded up as a tablet, there were all these little boxes that did stuff, and I was like "Hey, that's a pretty good UI for a tablet." When I folded it down to the keyboard "laptop" style, one of the "little boxes that does stuff" took the UI back to good old familiar start button land and it looked like a laptop should.

All of that took me about 30 seconds to figure out. What am I doing wrong that causes me not to hate this?

Greenspun opined, adding: "The only device that I can remember being as confused by is the BlackBerry PlayBook."

As a long-time techie and professional IT geek, I was totally on-board with his message, until that line... what was confusing about the Playbook's UI?

I used to write my own DOS boot scripts as a kid, I spent years on NT4, I currently work with enterprise AD domains, I've tested, performed and supported large-scale Windows 7 deployments... and it took me a good 10 minutes to figure out how to shut down Windows 8. And I'm not ashamed to admit that to my geek friends, because they all had the same experience. How freaking sad is that?

How does that compare to the Playbook's UI? I thought it was pretty standard...